Monte Morrone (2141 m) and Fonte della Vena

Seen this way, the search can be considered over, leaving room for personal commitment. It's a kind of burden that involves us day by day, more or less consciously. In our everyday actions we end up, in fact, making the choices that will give a “meaning”, a “colour”, a “name” to our existence.

Very complex is the matter of philosophical theorising (if any could be done), which would have to be woven with strange hypotheses about free will and about the scales of values we find ourselves carrying in our rucksack.

Simpler, on the other hand, is the matter as far as I am concerned: many questions of “meaning” I have already defined through my personal sensitivity. They aren't definitions based on choices of reasoned logic or on motives of opportunism, but on empathy and emotion. Then there are others like me who, aware of a need for “meaning”, end up making choices of faith. They aren't necessarily religious choices (that too... but not only); you can also have faith in the concept of justice or of fairness. These choices will to some extent guide them towards a definition of the “meaning” of their life. But this also applies to going to the mountains. Just as you devote yourself to your family, or to a work project, you can also devote yourself to the principles of honesty, of fair play, or to the search for balance. In the mountains you can devote yourself to the idea of the “rope team”, an entirely abstract idea, but a light, a model and a guide to set against a chaotic reality.

The day is born once again from the wish to support one another, as often happens for those who go to the mountains. It's always better to move as a group: it's safer, probably cheaper, but certainly more pleasant than plodding along there chewing over your own problems in an endless shambling with no solution. Going out as a group is an incentive to throw yourself out of bed even when you're dead tired, or when it would be easier to rot in your own laziness.

Massimo proposes an exploratory outing to Monte Sirente. Any outing is fine by me, but I raise the stakes by putting together a hike to Monte Morrone passing by the stazzi (shepherds' stone enclosures) of Fonte della Vena. Almost eighty per cent of the route is on a mule track wide enough for vehicles. It's the mule track that climbs from the San Rocco tunnel on the A24 up the valle Amara.

Maurizio joins the plan enthusiastically, and Valeria is persuaded to come along once again, in an attempt to get her ever more involved in the hikes. She has inexplicably trained for three weeks in a row and should certainly be able to walk on an easy dirt road. True, the height gain and the distance are still demanding, but it's also true that there are no particular technical obstacles along the route.

The dirt road runs alongside a stream that is dry throughout the summer months. In winter and spring this stream collects rainwater and meltwater. With the winter floods the stream ends up damaging the road, and maintenance work on the stream is essential to stop the adjacent road from falling apart.

Valeria feels it straight away: the heat and the climb (however gradual) slow her pace. She keeps a steady pace, though a slow one, so I decide to stay beside her and try to adapt to her rhythm. In the mountains Valeria becomes taciturn; she concentrates on her body, trying to understand its signals. On the whole she doesn't like suffering, at least not like me, who often go looking for physical stress. It looks like a change of character, and it only partly is … fatigue affects her emotional state, as it does for all of us.

Massimo and Maurizio go on ahead to keep their training steady; I'm the one urging them on, reassuring them that I'll stay close to Valeria. This hike was meant to get a bit of wind back into our lungs, and I can hardly force them to keep to our pace.

At the fork leading to the stazzi of Fonte della Vena they are waiting for us; they are almost 20 minutes ahead of us. To lighten the mood I crack a joke: “hey, you're here at last … I've been waiting for you for half an hour...” and then we laugh, but this is exactly the spirit Massimo gives to hikes: humour is essential, it makes everything lighter and more jovial.

Maurizio is struck by the area; it's a pleasure to move beneath the beech wood, you stay sheltered from the sun and the heat doesn't cut your legs from under you. It's transhumance time, and climbing towards the stazzi we meet the shepherds taking the sheep up to the high pastures. They've been shorn and they don't stink at all. We move through the middle of the flocks and it's great fun. A dog starts running through the wood, he's trying to cut off a hare. He looks like a bolt of lightning moving through the undergrowth. It's a truly special bucolic scene. I stop to talk to a shepherd who, smiling, tells us that in the mountains you can see anything. He says that here on the Duchessa mountains there are wolves too. They try to hunt down the sheep, but the dogs are strong and the wolves don't manage... they prefer to keep their distance.

I tell him that at the Lago della Duchessa we stopped to talk with Gregorio Lanciotti, we bought a cheese from him and he told us legends about the wolves. Once a hiker went walking on these mountains and all they found were his shoes... the wolves, the wolves...

Gregorio... poor Gregorio, he was a shepherd, he's dead... they found him on his doorstep... the shepherd tells us. I am deeply struck by this news. With him goes the last shepherd of the Monti della Duchessa. We, the shepherd goes on, are just pensioners; we only bring the sheep up for a few months.

What news... this is how the mountains have lost a great man... a pioneer from another age.

At the stazzi we meet up again with Massimo and Maurizio, who meanwhile have climbed at their own pace. Valeria is starting to get tired, so I promise her that we'll stop once we reach Fonte della Vena, near the stazzi.

When we come out of the wood we can see the short ridge leading to the summit of the Morrone. Valeria is tempted to go up, but I tell her there's no need, we can sit under a beech tree and enjoy the day. I give my camera to Massimo and tell him … take yourselves a summit photo... see you at the stazzi.

Valeria and I climb another 100 metres of height and stop under a big beech tree. It's just the two of us... we eat a sandwich... we chat... then Valeria reveals a surprise she had been preparing for me for months...

- Do you know what I'm giving you for your birthday?

She had been working on me nicely over the past months, but I'd had a suspicion.

- I've organised three days for us to go and bag the Alpe di Succiso.

It isn't the gift in itself that strikes me. Anyone can go to the Alpe di Succiso. Only a wife who knows you well can do this kind of thing... I'm caught off guard, disoriented, moved... She's had a stroke of genius. It's her and me on this mountain... what better place to give me my birthday present. If all goes well it will be her and me on that mountain... it's a present for me... to be lived with her... it isn't just for me... it's for us... I'm happy and proud of her. I couldn't wish for higher mountains, for mountains more in flower. This is the most beautiful gift. Knowing that I have been understood.

When Massimo and Maurizio come back from their visit to the summit they look very pleased. They too stop to eat a sandwich under the tree, we exchange a few words and set off again.

The way back along the dirt road is pleasant, easy, at times perhaps monotonous... but I carry inside me the satisfaction and pride of an out-of-the-ordinary wife who managed to plan a hike, to train to come with me up a specific mountain, to live that exceptional, symbolic instant that concerned only the two of us.

These are the choices that give “meaning” first to the mountains and then to life...